As a historical footnote, the Xbox version of the game was the first video game to use deferred shading
in its graphics.
Shrek provides examples of:
- Adapted Out: Donkey is completely absent, despite being a key character in the movie. He does appear on the boxart of the GameCube version, as mentioned below.
- Adaptation Title Change: When the game was released on GameCube, its name was changed to Shrek: Extra Large.
- Big Bad: Merlin is the one responsible for kidnapping Fiona and forcing Shrek to go on a quest to save her.
- Big Bad Ensemble: Merlin and the Ice Queen both act as powerful villains, though the Ice Queen is killed by Shrek around midway through the game, allowing Merlin to take over as the main Big Bad.
- Canon Foreigner: Any character who isn't Shrek, Fiona, the Magic Mirror, or Gingerbread Man. Humpty Dumpty appears in one level, a decade before his introduction to the films.
- Characterization Marches On: Little Red Riding Hood acts nothing like the Little Miss Badass she is in the Shrek 2 game.
- Covers Always Lie: Shrek: Extra Large's boxart has Donkey on the cover, despite him not appearing anywhere in the game.
- Disc-One Final Boss: The Ice Queen is set up as the main antagonist early on, only to be defeated and seemingly killed by Shrek towards the end of the fourth level, leaving Merlin to take over as the main Big Bad.
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- Merlin is the Big Bad here, and years later in Shrek the Third he'd appear as a benevolent (if kooky) supporting character who helps out Shrek.
- Prince Charming (known as the Crown Prince in Extra Large) also appears, and the only similarity between him and the one introduced in Shrek 2 is that both are Prince Charmless.
- This game is the only game directly based on a Shrek movie neither published or developed by Activision, unless you count the Puss in Boots game published by THQ. While TDK Mediactive did publish other Shrek titles, they were essentially spin-offs.
- Most of the characters from the movies barring Fiona, the Magic Mirror and Shrek himself are absent, and Shrek himself is a Heroic Mime who isn't voiced by his substitute actor Michael J. Gough.
- Easter Egg: Managing to fall out of bounds in Extra Large results in the player being trapped in a room that is an accurate recreation of what the inside of a GameCube looks like beneath the disc drive. The implication is that Shrek literally fell out of the game and is now trapped inside your console. Ending up here softlocks the game, with both cheats and the pause menu, requiring a hard reset to escape.
- Heroic Mime: Shrek himself: the narrator occasionally speaks for him, but he doesn't say a word in-game and only grunts.
- In Name Only: This game has almost nothing to do with the Shrek series aside from featuring Shrek, Fiona and the Magic Mirror. It's been said that this game was originally conceived as an original IP before being turned into a Shrek game, which would explain some things.
- Lightning Bruiser: A rather ridiculous example. For some reason, Shrek can run like an Olympic sprinter, Wall Jump, and maneuver in ways that the canon Shrek could never be expected to do. Later platformers rectified this by restricting his speed to a more reasonable degree.
- Thou Shalt Not Kill: Implemented as a game mechanic. Shrek can beat up enemies all he likes, but he can never do anything more to them than knock them out temporarily.
- Villainous Breakdown: Upon being defeated by Shrek, the Ice Queen breaks down, but quickly regains her composure and manages to tell Shrek where Merlin is before seemingly dying.Ice Queen: NOOOOOO! I'm melting.....AND IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT, MERLIN!!!
